VMD-L Mailing List

From: Norman Geist (norman.geist_at_uni-greifswald.de)
Date: Thu Feb 12 2015 - 02:44:34 CST

Hey John,

the exact error message is:

ERROR) OptiXRenderer) ERROR: Unknown error (Details: Function "RTresult
_rtContextLaunch2D(RTcontext, unsigned int, RTsize, RTsize)" caught
exception: (bvhtools error)An unexpected memory allocation error occurred in
TrivialThrustAllocator, [21823538], [15270173]) (OptiXRenderer.C:1188

GPU is a Geforce GTX660 (propritary NVidia driver version: 343.22)

This error occurs for me doing the following steps:

1. open a fresh vmd
2. disable axis
3. enable ruler in scale mode
4. render using TachyonOptix (interactive or not)

Norman Geist.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Stone [mailto:johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 5:21 PM
> To: Norman Geist
> Cc: 'Tristan Croll'; VMD Mailing List
> Subject: Re: vmd-l: Handful of rendering issues
>
> Norman,
>
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 04:32:35PM +0100, Norman Geist wrote:
> > 1. Using the "ruler" in "scale" mode, when nothing else
> (including
> > axis) is visible, TachyonOptix will crash.
>
> I don't get a crash when I do this on my system here, but I will
> say that the rendering of the scale bar is pretty wacky due to
> weaknesses in the scheme I used for setting cylinder radii for OptiX
> when drawing lines in VMD 1.9.2, something that still needs more work.
> Can you post the error message that VMD prints?
> Without the error it's hard to say what's going on there for you.
>
> > 2. The general fact TachyonOptix will no more work without
> > restarting VMD, if it has crashed once.
>
> It depends. If the OptiX runtime runs out of GPU memory or other
> scenarios that it can't bail out of, it will terminate rendering and
> usually destroy the OptiX context on its way down. In some of these
> cases,
> the state of the CUDA context also gets destroyed, and VMD is not able
> to
> recover it. There are also a lot of cases where VMD does recover from
> less serious issues, but unfortunately, I'd say that running the GPU
> out
> of memory is one of the more common problems, particularly on a machine
> where other graphical apps are competing for resources (e.g. Google
> Chrome,
> a surprisingly resource hungry application, in terms of GPU memory...)
>
> Cheers,
> John
>
>
> > Norman Geist.
> >
> >
> >
> > From: owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu [mailto:owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu] On
> Behalf
> > Of Tristan Croll
> > Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 12:15 PM
> > To: vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> > Subject: vmd-l: Handful of rendering issues
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi there,
> >
> >
> >
> > I have a few minor rendering-related issues/suggestions in VMD
> 1.9.2:
> >
> >
> >
> > - If I have an isosurface visualised in the default point
> representation
> > and switch to GLSL rendermode, every point becomes a VERY large
> sphere and
> > the system slows to a crawl.
> >
> >
> >
> > - When a wireframe is rendered in Tachyon the lines are of course
> replaced
> > by thin cylinders. This works out nicely in the CPU-only Tachyon
> > (particularly if I use a transparent material, yielding a nicely
> > unobtrusive mesh), but the cylinder diameter is much larger in
> > Tachyon-OptiX. Is it possible to shrink this, or is this one of
> the
> > trade-offs that allows the renderer to be so blazingly fast?
> >
> >
> >
> > - When using the interactive renderer, closing the rendering
> window with
> > the mouse rather than pressing Esc or q crashes VMD.
> >
> >
> >
> > - I think it would be awesome if the interactive renderer had an
> option to
> > render the scene at some multiple of the screen resolution, for
> when
> > poster-quality images are needed.
> >
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> >
> >
> > Tristan
> >
> >
>
> --
> NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/